I’ve always thought that preachers don’t say enough about politics. Only my idea of what preachers should be saying is based on a strict interpretation of my own opinions.

That is to say, I think that the entire clergy should spend more time walking between the battle lines. For God’s sake, and I mean that literally, who better to talk against the stupidly violent and needlessly cruel tendencies of mankind than those who are paid to summon our better angels?

Of course, it generally doesn’t work that way. We got this hellish war going on in Iraq and what does my church have to say about it?

Not much. And my church has a pope and its own tiny country. Still, my church chooses its issues carefully while stepping into molestation doo-doo so deep it can only count on another 2,000 years of existence to dig itself out.

Anyway, what I expect from religion is somewhere in the pot with Quakers, Unitarians and All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena, a church that was busted by the IRS for a sermon delivered by a guest speaker, the Rev. George F. Regas, two days before the election.

Regas, former rector of this progressive do-good congregation, imagined Jesus debating President Bush and contender Sen. John Kerry – something I can’t imagine myself. Anyway, while he didn’t endorse a candidate, he did say that “good people of profound faith” could support either. Then he had the nerve to nail the Iraq war, saying that Jesus would have strongly criticized Bush for a preemptive war that “has led to disaster.”

Mind you, saying such a thing four years ago was far more dangerous than it is now, a time when a vast majority of Americans suddenly agree with Jesus’ war views.

This heresy led to an IRS investigation that wound up costing the 3,500-member congregation $200,000 that might have gone toward its many good works.

Fighting back, the church cited procedural and substantive errors, including alleged inappropriate conversations between IRS and Justice Department officials.

In fact, those conversations, documented in e-mails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, seem to show that the Bush Justice Department was involved in this matter way before the IRS made a move.

At stake was the congregation’s tax-exempt status. That’s because federal law prohibits tax-exempt organizations like churches from intervening in political campaigns and elections.

Still, it was interesting that the first people to come to the left-leaning church’s defense were right-leaning ministers Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, men who caught the back swing of the IRS lash in the 1980s and 1990s, when they were targeted for swaying Jesus to the Republican cause.

This little contretemps cost the government little while it might have cost the church everything. Luckily, the IRS backed off last September, but in a way that caused a church leader to say that the two-year investigation would have a continued “chilling effect on the freedom of clerics of all faiths to preach about moral values and significant social issues such as war and poverty.”

Well, apparently not.

In fact, just the other day Jim Garlow, pastor of the 2,500-member Skyline Church in San Diego, started a mass mobilization of state clergy with a mass conference call to 1,000 mostly evangelical ministers to discuss ways to amend the state constitution in November to ban gay marriage.

The phone meeting – which included lawyers and political consultants naturally, since this is an election – is the opening salvo of a war on what is essentially a civil rights issue.

The clerics hope to influence voters with a 40-day fast and a far easier 100 days of prayer that they hope will cause God to keep a small minority of his homosexual citizens from living with the benefit of legal matrimony.

Back in 2000, my church – which was still playing an expensive game of hide-the-pervert-priests – and the Mormon church helped pass Proposition 22, which defined marriage as that which exists between men and women. This was the same law recently overturned by the state Supreme Court in a ruling that may well be overturned come November by a righteous public.

I say “may well” because the ministers in on that call have flocks numbering 1 million, possibly one-issue voters.

This is different, of course. While ministers can’t urge parishioners to back certain candidates (if you want that, tune into the all-day radio gospel shows), they can openly advocate legislation and initiatives.

You know, “Dear Lord, Please help us pass the sewage overlay district bond measure!”

One minister said, “Our culture has gotten in such a mess that gay weddings are happening.”

Not poverty, not an absence of health insurance for 47 million, not tax laws written for the rich, not 500 of our state’s own sons and daughters killed in Iraq. None of those things are making a mess of our culture. No, it’s that always reliable smoke-screen issue, gay marriage, something most of us wouldn’t notice if it walked by in a wedding dress.

It’s misdirected, sure, and cruel. But it’s also a big healthy exercise in freedom of speech that might make the government think twice before jumping on those rare Christians courageous enough to preach love thy brother and peace.

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